taks

i can see a new form factor happening soon. it's getting to where you cannot fit your video card into a standard ATX case. grrr... i think they also need to come up with a standard for power, within the same region as the PCI-E connector. maybe like a piggy-back extension to the PCI-E bus connector. the inside of a case is getting hairy (of course, the switch to SATA has made some things easier). taks

i think you meant LOW sunspot cycle. it's currently very high. the maunder minimum was a devastating period in which there were almost none. actually, if you look at graphs of the solar activity, and compare them to what we think temps were like over the last several hundred years, you'll notice a surprising correlation. sunspots by themselves are not the actual cause of the increase in energy, but they are indicators of increased activity within the sun. taks

oh, i'm certain there is. i'll even lump in those that are so reckless that loss of life was imminent. if you said "can be the most useful..." i'd agree. as it stands, they simply aren't used as weapons that often compared to other, true, weapons. using the same logic we could say that we all commit suicide by eating <insert recent whipping boy food here> regularly which leads to <insert one of the top 5 killers here>. taks

al's a politician. i'll treat him the same as i treat every other: with disdain. he's certainly getting the attention he craves i suppose (which may be his ultimate agenda, i don't know). his "experts" are scientific "hacks" in my opinion, blinded by their own ego (or whatever their motivation is). taks

exactly, though they think the earth's "wobble" on its axis is what causes the ice ages since the two periods are closely linked. my point is that if you use the last 30 years of data, it looks like we're headed for doom. however, in the 1970s the opposite was true as temperatures were in steep decline from about the late 1930s through the late 1970s. note that CO2 was increasing during that time, probably faster than now (haven't seen the latest plots). many of the older climate scientists that are now claiming "catastrophic warming," were then claiming "new ice age approaching." it's all a big joke. taks

no, it's not. first, the poles are going to melt. it would take a lot more than a few degrees to do that. greenland has been gaining mass on its ice sheet because of increased precipitation. the antarctic is cooling in spite of mkreku's inability to read a chart. the only real ice that could impact the sea level rise significant enough for 20 ft rise is greenland and antarctica, both of which are gaining ground. note that if the north pole completely melted (which evidence suggests has happened before), it would not affect sea levels because it is already floating on the sea. a political, not scientific organization. the IPCC is frought with numerous problems.

even YOUR plot shows that it is cooler... sheesh, can't even read your own data. and, hate to tell you, the only area of the antarctic that is warmer is the very edge that touches the warm pacific waters, i.e. outside the antarctic cirlcle. duh. that's also evident in your plot. :crazy: sorry, but warming alarmists predict warming poles, both. not "some cooler some warmer." nobody has said we haven't warmed, either. we just came out of the little ice age in which temperatures were KNOWN to be much lower than normal, everywhere. the question is whether the "global warming" hypothesis has strong connection to man. al's making the claim that this is over 1000s of years, not 10. do you really think 10 years is a representative sample? ice ages occur on the order of 10s of thousands of years, yet somehow 10 years (or 40) is good enough to draw the conclusions the same scientists are making? even those scientists aren't that silly. study statistics, it is helpful. taks

I believe angle to the sun makes an impact as well. angle to the sun is the reason it is dark 6 months out of the year at the poles... taks

yeah, that bit always gets dropped from the media reports. did you ever see the survivorman when les went up to baffin island? 700 m from the north pole. coooooold. then the sun came out and it got hot (even though the air was still cold). strange place. anyway, the point is that the day-day temperature swings are influenced more by cloud cover than anything else (also, time of year because it gets dark in the winter). taks

from dictionary.com "any instrument or device for use in attack or defense in combat, fighting, or war, as a sword, rifle, or cannon." in other words, there has to be intent, not just the cause of loss of life. since cars are not made intentionally to kill, they do not otherwise qualify as weapons. one can use a car as a weapon, however, but then you've added intent to the equation. if you look up the number of intentional vehicular homicides, it's probably pretty low. most car accidents that result in death are unintended. taks

oh, i see. well, ice caps aren't going to melt from a few degrees. the antarctic is cooling, and, overall, growing. greenland's ice shelf is actually gaining mass in the middle as well (the glaciers are calving off into the sea, but pressure in the middle from excess weight from added snow is what causes that, not a degree rise in temp). keep in mind, when we talk about the poles warming, we're talking about going from -30 to -29, F, hehe. interesting point, btw, alanschu, hadn't thought about that. taks

then i'm not sure why you mentioned water in the first place? the oceans do play a major role, btw, and the weak el nino (warming of the sea surface temps in the pacific) is what caused the warm early winter on the east coast of the US and most of europe. what didn't make the presses, btw, was that western US and eastern asia were suffering under way below average temps... here in CO it has been miserably cold (7 feet of snow or so in the springs, 4 feet above average and our "snowy" season isn't till march/april). CA has been cold, too. task

actually, water vapor is double edged. on one hand, it is the main greenhouse gas. it traps heat the earth would otherwise re-radiate out into space. on the other hand, it also reflects incident radiation from the sun. positive and negative feedback of a sort. oh, and what i was talking about wasn't water, in the previous comment. weather events, such as storms, are caused by a temperature gradient in the atmosphere. when a cold front meets a warm front you get a storm (providing there is sufficient moisture). warmer poles mean less gradients, on average, than usual. the arctic IS warmer. most definitely. the antarctic IS cooler, significantly. alarmists cannot explain this (huge hole in their theory, btw). taks

no, he doesn't. name one fact that al claims. and then tell me why you KNOW it is a fact. give you a little hint, don't use the hurricane thing in al's movie because the World Meteorological Organization put out a press release basically saying al didn't know what he was talking about. i.e. there's no link between human activity and hurricanes. really, you've heard everything i've had to say on this matter? curious where my conspiracy claim was... all i said was al had an agenda. look up the definition of conspiracy. oh, btw, just gave you one fact above that al got wrong. you're oh for two so far. it's not my fault you're unable to tell propaganda from fact. taks

it doesn't. alarmist environmentalists have to hang their hats on something since they've been proven incapable of modeling even past climate, let alone future. ask a meteorologist, if the poles warm faster than the equator (the north pole has seemingly warmed more, btw), it will result in overall less extreme weather. any explanation otherwise is really, truly, garbage. taks

the GW hypothesis IS warming, not change. and warmer poles (where most of the warming is supposed to take place) means less temperature gradient between the poles and the equator, which means LESS severe weather. the alarmists have switched to "climate change" from "global warming" because it's media friendly. the climate ALWAYS changes. hell, all of the US was covered in ice 10-12k years ago. during the MWP greenland was, well, GREEN. taks

unless it's in favor of the global warming hypothesis. watch how many idiotic news stories talk about some temperature record or another in the same paragraph as GW. then compare it to cold weather. statements like this suddenly appear. taks

hehe, so serious you would trust a politician spreading propaganda? sheesh... i don't even know where to begin to address what is wrong with this statement. simply put, al's got an agenda. i won't go so far to say he's a moron, but he's not far from it, or he thinks the thinking population is stupid enough to believe the horse poop he's shovelling. taks

never said you were bankrupt, i said you will be. a country the size of the US, with your system, would get there much quicker, i might add. it's all relative, i.e. comparing a country the size of the US, with 300 million people to a country the size of denmark with a little over 5 million people, is a bit disingenuous (not to mention denmark's trade surplus vs. the US' trade deficit). i'm not sure i understand why everyone thinks this is just "supposed to happen overnight" based on anything i've ever said. even the hardline communism of the soviet union (and china) lasted nearly a century (for both). taks

yeah, i'll buy that. small companies cannot always afford it. mine has 7 employees and we only offer a medical reimbursement plan, which actually works out better than the corporate health insurance from my previous employer. the overall benefit is less (from the insurance) but it will cost me less out of pocket in the end. taks

you should check your state labor laws, but most that i know of require full-time employees be offered some sort of health care plan. also, be careful next time you call someone a liar, it makes you look pretty stupid since i can guarantee you can't back that claim up. taks

Nice lie, Taks. I work 40 hours a week and no, I am not offered healthcare. are you considered a full-time employee, working all your hours for one company? taks

actually, last time i checked sweden announced they were cutting back on benefits to be more competitive. also, i never said the US was a model non-socialist society. why don't you pay attention to what i DID say, not what you think i said. apparently you don't even know what i said, so who's talking out his arse? no kidding. never commented on health, i only commented on healthcare. the US has the best overall health care in the world, which is why people come here, not everywhere else. curious what their metrics are... oops, it's based on how much they spend? funny, sounds like a socialist ideal to me. the US system is better, sorry to say. healthcare in the US is runaway expensive because, in part (note i say IN PART), we have to help support all the even more socialist lazy-ass countries that refuse to pay market rate for things developed here (like drugs, for example). taks

sorry, but that's nonsense. anything that is more socialist will bankrupt itself eventually. every where else in the world that has socialized healthcare either has sub-standard care, or they're dropping benefits in order to be able to afford it. there's a reason people come to the US for their healthcare in dire situations... it's just plain better. taks